pogo | KPMG had been performing disastrously on inspections conducted by the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and it was under
pressure to improve. In the annual inspections, the oversight board
scrutinizes a sample of the audits that major accounting firms perform
on companies listed on U.S. stock markets. Advance word of which audits
the PCAOB planned to inspect would give KPMG an edge.
On Sweet’s
first day at the firm, over lunch at a posh Mediterranean restaurant,
KPMG brass pumped him for information on the PCAOB’s inspection plans.
His second day on the job, in a tête-à-tête in an executive conference
room, as Sweet recalled, his boss’s boss referred to the uneasiness
Sweet had shown divulging such information and told him he needed to
remember where his paycheck came from. His fourth day on the job, while
Sweet and his new boss, Thomas Whittle, walked back to the office from
lunch at a Chinese restaurant, Sweet told Whittle that he knew which
audits the oversight board planned to inspect that year—and that he had
taken PCAOB documents with him.
That evening, “Thomas Whittle
came by my office where I was sitting and he leaned against the door and
asked me to give him the list,” Sweet testified.
Brian Sweet was part of a pipeline that funneled confidential information from KPMG’s prime regulator to KPMG.
The
conspiracy took Washington’s notorious revolving door to a criminal
extreme. According to the Justice Department, KPMG partners hired PCAOB
employees, pumped them for inside information on the oversight board’s
plans, and then exploited it to cheat on inspections. Meanwhile, PCAOB
employees angled for jobs at KPMG and divulged regulatory secrets to the
audit firm.
The case has led to a series of convictions and guilty pleas—and a $50 million administrative fine against KPMG. It also laid bare inner workings of the revolving door in detail seldom seen.
Beyond the conduct labeled as criminal, in little-noticed testimony the case revealed a series of side contacts between senior KPMG partners and top officials of the PCAOB—one, or in some cases two, members of its five-member governing board. The low-profile meetings at locations such as the Capital Hilton, which is steps from the PCAOB’s Washington headquarters, gave KPMG leaders a preview of questioning they would later face at periodic meetings with the full board.
But all of that is just part of a larger picture: The supposedly independent regulator is inextricably tied to the industry it oversees, a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation found.
Beyond the conduct labeled as criminal, in little-noticed testimony the case revealed a series of side contacts between senior KPMG partners and top officials of the PCAOB—one, or in some cases two, members of its five-member governing board. The low-profile meetings at locations such as the Capital Hilton, which is steps from the PCAOB’s Washington headquarters, gave KPMG leaders a preview of questioning they would later face at periodic meetings with the full board.
But all of that is just part of a larger picture: The supposedly independent regulator is inextricably tied to the industry it oversees, a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation found.
